


The Biju Sprinter

by Geonn



Series: The Remnant Fleet [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Planet, F/M, Rape, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Trans Character, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:07:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2470940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bauwerji Crow, a hero to her people, begins to fear that the saviors of her people are just another type of oppressor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Biju Sprinter

The ships were called bracijera, an ancient term that couldn’t be translated by the Karezza technology. Bauwerji tried to explain the term several times when Cizek inquired, but it was difficult. Bracijera was the air of a storm after the rain ceased but when there was still a chance of thunder and lightning. It was the razor’s edge of harsh weather, the balance between calm and a maelstrom. They were in production not long after the Catarrh were finally defeated as a means to rebuild the Balanquin military. When the Cetidroi arrived in their system, the designs were altered to allow for space travel. It took longer than they would have liked, but eventually their bracijera were capable of leaving atmosphere to do some damage to their newest invaders.

Bauwerji built her ship, the _Biju Sprinter_ , from the ground up. Six feet from nose to tail and four feet wide, with a wingspan of seven feet, the ships were small even by Balanquin standards. Their vehicles were usually much larger, but the bracijera were meant to be single-person crafts. The pilot climbed aboard, knelt on either side of the padded console and clung to the molded leather with their thighs before lying down on their stomachs. Their hands fitted into slots below and slightly in front of the chinrest. In front of the pilot was a video screen fed by two dozen microcameras on the outer hull that provided a full range of vision around the ship.

The ships were mass-produced, but Bauwerji elected to build hers so she could have a personal connection to it when the time came to go into battle. They had sat back and allowed the Karezza to fight for them, to push the Catarrh out of their cities, and the time had come for them to return their favor. The strategy was that a small and persistent enemy could provide a better adversary to the large Cetidroi vessels due to their maneuverability.

It turned out they were correct. The bracijera were more than effective; they had turned the tide of the war. Bauwerji recalled the metal of the _Sprinter_ shuddering under her and between her legs as she skimmed along the belly of the Cetidroi flagship. Her head had been swimming from the lack of gravity during the battle. There was no up or down, no horizon to regain her bearings, so she had used the alien ships as markers. Some of them were canted at odd angles, others were completely upside-down to her point of view. She was dizzy and disoriented for most of the battle, but in the end they were victorious. The Cetidroi were pushed back, and the planet was once again safe. In the months since the Cetidroi were sent running had been full of hectic movement, trying to make sure the invaders hadn’t caused any lasting damage.

Bauwerji was in one of the military hangars working on the _Sprinter_ when Ele Zirem Ele came out of his office. She tightened her jaw and focused on her repairs, content to ignore the man if he ignored her. Many bracijera were destroyed in the battle and, while she had been one of the lucky ones, the _Sprinter_ suffered its share of damage. The engines sputtered the entire way back to Pelorum, and she was reluctant to take it back to the vacuum before she was certain it would hold up.

“Looks like you survived in one piece.”

“Mostly.”

He moved in close enough that she could smell his natural odor under the cologne most Karezza men used in an attempt to respect Balanquin sensitivities. She wrinkled her nose and still refused to look at him as he reached up and traced one of her braids. She had asked him not to touch them but he had a convenient tendency to forget at times like this.

“I think you’ve earned a break, don’t you?”

“I’m good.”

“Come on, Bowery...”

Bauwerji closed her eyes and resisted the urge to snap at the man. She was standing near the starboard wing, her hands buried in the components, and she truly didn’t need the distraction. But he was Karezza, and they were the Balanquin’s saviors. That was the edict from their leaders, stretching through all the ranks of the rebellion. As their interim leader said in their celebratory speech: “We would not be here without them. We owe our very existence to our Karezza saviors.” Therefore anything a Karezza asked of a Balanquin could not be considered unreasonable.

He stopped behind Bauwerji and rested his hands on her hips. Two fingers of her left hand were pressing down on a coupling so she could check it for damage, but as soon as he touched her she let go of it and closed her eyes. The first time this happened it had been with Cizek and she’d been a more than willing participant. She’d never been with anyone before and, while she found Balanquin females preferable to the males, there was something about the Karezza males that appealed to her. She and Cizek had been lovers for the duration of the campaign, up until his untimely death in a raid on the capital. She still missed feeling his arms around her in the night.

Zirem Ele was a different matter. He was a mechanic assigned to work with Balanquin engineers to meld their technology. He was tasked with finding a way to supplement Karezza advances with the Pelorum tech, making them both stronger in the process. After he arrived on the planet he discovered that he had a fetish for Balanquin females. Bauwerji drew in a deep breath as he moved his hands around her waist, unfastened the trousers of her work uniform, and pushed them down. 

The Karezza were their saviors, she thought as she braced her hands on the wing of her ship. If it weren’t for them we would have died or suffered even worse fates at the hands of the Catarrh. She heard Zirem Ele breathing heavily as he removed his own clothing and pressed himself against her. There had been camps, places where Balanquin were corralled like beasts of burden and forced to present themselves to males. Sometimes five, six, ten in sequence. Zirem Ele huffed and tightened his grip on her waist as he pushed inside of her. His hands were so big, and her waist so small, that his fingers were nearly touching over her stomach as he pulled her back against him.

He climaxed with a grunt, his hips tight against her buttocks, filling her with his disgusting warmth. She grimaced at the sensation, grateful he couldn’t see her face as well as for the fact that Karezza and Balanquin seemingly couldn’t reproduce. There had been only a handful of experiments done but the results were not promising.

Zirem Ele remained inside of her longer than necessary, and she was forced to remain there until he withdrew or awkwardly ask him to remove his penis from her body so she could go back to work. Finally he retreated and Bauwerji pulled her uniform slacks back up. She heard him fastening his trousers behind her and remembered what another pilot had told her during the war, when reports of the Karezza taking advantage first started to come out.

“If you fight, it turns something marginally pleasurable into something awful and endless. In war, I’m willing to take whatever pleasure I can get.”

“Even if it’s forced upon you?” Bauwerji said, still sore from her first run-in with a Karezza who wasn’t Cezik.

Her friend had grimaced and furrowed her brow. “You’re speaking as if we have any choice in the matter.”

Bauwerji looked at the spanner resting a few inches away, the heavy head of it opened wide to reveal the jagged row of teeth. The better to grip bolts, and the easier to tear away flesh if swung at the right angle. They might not have had a choice when the Catarrh were occupying their cities, and their options may have been limited when their skies were full of Cetidroi, but they were free now. They certainly had a choice now. She reached for the tool even as she heard Zirem Ele walking away. She looked over her shoulder, laying eyes on him for the first time that day. 

She put the spanner back down and ran her hands over the smooth, cold skin of the _Sprinter_. It had taken her away from Pelorum once, in order to make a soldier out of her. It helped her achieve her full potential, the destiny stolen from her by the Catarrh invasion. In time she had faith that it would get her even further away from her home, away from the Karezza and the bizarre pact her people had formed with their saviors.

But before that could happen, the ship needed to be spaceworthy again. She slipped her hands back into the ship’s innards and returned to work.

#

That night when she bathed, she spent longer than usual between her legs, scrubbing away any lingering memory of Zirem Ele’s touch and his orgasm. Her hand rubbed the sensitive flesh until her body’s response shifted from pleasure, to pain, then back to pleasure again. She rested her feet on the edge of her bath and curled her toes as she pushed two fingers inside. Karezza pricks were too thick near the base and Balanquin women weren’t built to take such a large tool. Her fingers massaged the muscles, reminded them of a proper touch, and she parted her lips as she stroked herself to orgasm.

After she finished she remained in the bath. Years living in the desert during the Catarrh invasion trained her to never waste water, and she enjoyed the sensation of submersion. She moved her hands through the water and touched her skin, still reveling in the idea of being clean, becoming more relaxed until she was moments from falling asleep.

Or perhaps she had fallen asleep, because when she looked up again she saw that her barrack mate had arrived and was attempting to move quietly through their shared rooms. Bauwerji pushed herself up and crossed her legs under the water and Ediren turned at the sound of water lapping against the sides of the tub. She smiled and moved to the door of the bathing room.

“Sorry. Was I being loud?”

“No. I wasn’t sleeping very heavily. And I shouldn’t have been sleeping at all.” She took her towel and gestured at the tub. “Would you like to use my water?”

“Yes, please.” Ediren stepped out of her shoes and began to unfasten her jumpsuit. She slipped it off her shoulders as Bauwerji exited the tub and wrapped the towel around her waist. She glanced back at the woman who shared her quarters, the flat of her chest and the small penis tucked between her thighs. There were procedures that could be done even on Pelorum that would alter her body, though the Karezza had far superior methods, but Ediren refused. She said she didn’t need the body of a woman to know who she was, and Bauwerji respected that about her. Still, it was sometimes interesting to explore the dichotomy of her very feminine posture and comportment with the very masculine feature that remained between her thighs.

Ediren stepped into the tub and knelt down, letting the water rise over her hips to her stomach. She reached up to pin her hair on top of her head, and Bauwerji admired the play of muscles under her friend’s skin. 

“You’re beautiful, Dir.”

Ediren smiled and cupped her hands under the water, drawing it up over her chest. “Someone made you feel terrible about yourself today, didn’t they?”

“Perhaps.” Bauwerji smiled and tucked the towel tighter around her hips. “I believe I shall retire to bed. Enjoy your bath, Ediren.”

“I shall.” She cupped her hands under the water again and lifted them over her head to let it trickle down her arms.

In the rebellion, when Ediren was still identifying as a male, she and Bauwerji would spend time together in Bauwerji’s hovel. Bauwerji was attracted to the feminine energy she could sense despite the outer appearance, and Ediren was drawn to anyone who saw her as she truly was. In the end they decided against carrying on a physical relationship, although there were nights Bauwerji truly wondered if that had been an idiotic decision.

“Dir?”

“Mm?”

“Would you sleep in my bed tonight? I would like someone to hold me.”

Ediren said, “Of course. I’ll be there after bathing.”

Bauwerji nodded. “Take your time. And thank you.”

She went into her bedroom and traded the towel for a baggy pair of sleep pants. She slipped the straps of the pants up onto her shoulders and fastened them at the neck, then crawled into bed with the lights on. The truth, the awful truth that she couldn’t bear to think about in the harsh light of day, was that sometimes the Karezza seemed as bad at the Catarrh. They were kinder about their invasion, and they treated Balanquin as respected equals... for the most part. But how long would the Balanquin have to pay off their debt? How many times would they have to show obeisance to a Karezza for what they had done? How many times would she have to bite her tongue while Zirem Ele forced himself on her? When would they truly be free? 

The lights dimmed, and the other side of the bed sank under Ediren’s weight. Bauwerji closed her eyes so her friend would think she was asleep, so she wouldn’t begin any whispered bedtime conversation. She just wasn’t up for idle banter and she didn’t feel like talking about what was really on her mind. So she feigned sleep, and Ediren took the hint. She spooned Bauwerji from behind and embraced her, resting both hands on her friend’s stomach, whispering, “Moon goes with you,” as Bauwerji finally drifted off.

#

She continued working on the _Sprinter_ whenever she could. The provisional government, formed by a coalition of Karezza and Balanquin officials, had finally dissolved in order for the Balanquin to retake control of their own country. She hoped that the Karezza withdrawal meant that they would have a smaller presence, but the day-to-day representatives like Zirem Ele remained where they were. Also annoying was the fact she’d had a run-in with a Karezza general after the Cetidroi were defeated, and he’d mentioned her name in a broadcast back to Pelorum. One mention and suddenly she was renowned as “the Balanquin flier.” People wanted to interview her, wanted to hear her version of the fight.

“I was dizzy,” she told the first person to ask. “Their ships were darker than ours, so I just fired every time I saw something in the right shade.”

Now it seemed like every hail she received was someone else wanting to deify her, wanting to use her face to personify the war. She wasn’t hiding out in the hangar, per se, but fixing her ship did afford a convenient excuse to stay out of sight from sun-up to sun-down. She was crouching on top of her ship, the bay standing open, when Zirem Ele crossed the hangar in front of her. She tensed at the sight of him but he didn’t even glance in her direction.

Instead, he approached Rajemit, one of the youngest mechanics there. She had fought in the war but her bracijera hadn’t left atmosphere. She served as one of the HomeGuard, a squadron assigned to defend the skies of their home planet from any Cetidroi attempts to land. Zirem Ele took the tool out of her hand, gripped the scruff of her neck, and pushed her feet apart with his boot.

“No...” The girl’s voice echoed through the hall. Bauwerji looked away, focused on her work even as her muscles tightened in reactive anger. She stared at her tools, the grease on her hands, and ignored the sound of Zirem Ele growling at the girl to just calm down and let it happen. The girl had never come to Bauwerji’s aid. No one in the hangars ever spoke up when a Karezza was taking his just rewards. She lifted her eyes and saw others like her, pilots and soldiers who had stood up to massive warships to repay their debt to the Karezza.

 _We won the war for them_ , Bauwerji thought. _We risked our lives to turn the tide of their war, and still they claim debt?_

She picked up her spanner and closed its jaws around a long bolt. She grimaced as she tightened the screw to make sure the bolt wouldn’t slip. Then she climbed down off her ship and walked purposefully across the bay. 

Zirem Ele’s pants were down and he was using one arm to pin the girl against his chest. He was trying to force her onto her knees, but the girl had locked her legs and refused to drop. 

“No,” Bauwerji said. 

He turned as she swung her arm in a wide arc, the sharp end of the bolt catching him just above the right eye. She swung with enough force to penetrate his skull, and the bolt was long enough to dig deep into his brain. Zirem Ele was rocked back on his heels, blood pouring into his eye and matting his hair as he reached up as if to confirm he was really injured. Bauwerji pulled the makeshift weapon from his head and swung again, this time flooring him with her follow-through. One side of his head was horribly concave, and his hair glistened with blood. It pooled around him as his hands spread out to either side, dead spiders twitching against the concrete as his pale blood mixed with black oil.

She took a deep breath and let it out quickly, widening her eyes as if just waking from a dream. She looked and saw Zirem Ele’s final victim cowering against her ship, and then noticed the rest of the hangar was staring at her as well. An older woman, her hair streaked with silver, was the first to approach Bauwerji. Her name was Zu, an orphan who had grown up to become one of their most senior pilots. She taught most of the people in the room how to fly when the first bracijera was complete.

Zu looked at the body lying at Bauwerji’s feet, then met her gaze. “A dead Karezza can’t go unreported. They would blame us all for his death if we tried.”

“I know.” Bauwerji dropped her weapon, the metal ringing loudly as it hit the ground. “But I couldn’t stand by. Not one more second.”

Zu nodded and cupped Bauwerji’s face. “We condemn you for this act and we will see that you are punished for it.” She dropped her hand. “I will find an official Karezza lawmaker. Perhaps there is one in Ticih who will be free.”

Bauwerji frowned. Ticih was nearly four hours away. 

“The rest of you, keep watch on the prisoner. Be vigilant. Take care that she does not take any supplies from the unlocked office.”

Another flier said, “We will watch her, Zu.” Then he turned his back and stared at the wall. The rest of the fliers in the room followed his lead, until the entire squadron was showing her the backs of their heads. Zu nodded once before she turned and walked away.

Bauwerji knew that she had been given a precious gift, but she also knew four hours was not as much headway as it seemed. She ran to the unlocked office and gathered what she would need - packets of food, water pouches, pills to aid sleep and queasiness - and carried the whole mess to the _Sprinter_. She dumped her supplies into a carryall and slung it over her shoulder. She was already wearing her flight suit, an attempt to make it harder for Zirem Ele to get at her that day, so she climbed onto the side of the _Sprinter_ and began its pre-flight procedures.

Her heart was pounding. All around her, the other fliers remained in place. Not one of them spoke, none even tried to glimpse what she was doing out of the corner of their eye, and for that she was grateful. They were risking their own lives by refusing to look at her. If the Karezza discovered they had let Zirem Ele’s murderer escape, they would suffer as accessories to the crime.

The last item she retrieved was a helmet attached to a spare oxygen tank. She didn’t know how much good it would do, but she was also aware that sometimes seconds mattered in the dark depths. She cast one final look at the people who had turned their backs on her. She couldn’t thank them, couldn’t acknowledge what they were doing for her, but she hoped they understood what it meant. She climbed up onto the _Sprinter_ , knelt in the cockpit, and stretched out along the center rise.

The ship was molded to her body and fit her as snugly as her uniform. Her hands went easily into the sockets, and she felt the warm hum of the engine running through her sternum and down between her legs. When the canopy lowered over her, she applied a bit of pressure with the fingertips of her left hand. The ship rose from its slip, wavered slightly, and then followed the tilt of her body until the nose was aimed toward the exit.

Bauwerji closed her eyes and said a soft prayer. She had survived the Catarrh attack on the Institute. She had lived in exile and fought a rebellion for freedom. She had been a mote in the eye of a god and the god had been blinded as a result. This was nothing. This was an insignificant battle in a lifetime of her wars. She would survive this. She only had one regret.

“I’m sorry, Ediren,” she said, “I hate to leave you. I will see you again one day.”

She knew that if she stayed, Ediren would stand beside her. That would only result in Ediren being shunned as well. She would be taken to a camp, and women like her did not fare well in that sort of environment. As much as it pained her, she had to flee without saying goodbye to keep Ediren safe. Still, the idea of just vanishing from her best friend’s life was torture. She could leave an entire planet behind without a second thought, but abandoning one woman was too much to bear.

The time for reconsidering had passed. Bauwerji’s life had never been one of planning. She was thrown into wars, forced to fight before she was ready, and she’d never backed down. She applied enough thrust to clear the building and then plotted a trajectory that would take her into the sky. The ship shuddered around her and she quietly prayed that her repairs had been complete enough to get her safely out of the atmosphere. The clouds parted around the nose of the _Sprinter_ , and its entire frame began to shake as the air became thinner. She parted her lips and whispered encouragement to the small machine, well aware of the thin layer between her and several different unpleasant methods of death. Asphyxiation or plummeting to the ground were tops, of course, and she was well aware of a rattle she hadn’t heard during her test runs.

“Take,” she whispered. “Take, take, take...”

There was a moment when she thought the strain would be too much, that the _Sprinter_ had gone above and beyond its abilities and would finally fail her. She couldn’t fault the ship for that. She closed her eyes and lowered her head to kiss the padding where she was supposed to rest her chin.

“It’s okay, ji’o. It’s okay. You did what I asked of you. That was enough.”

As if responding to her, the shuddering stopped. She looked up and stared out into the abyss, out into the unbelievably wide sea of stars. Far out ahead she could see the shattered remains of several different ships, vessels that had fallen to the Cetidroi. She smiled and felt tears in her eyes, laughing at the fact she had actually succeeded.

“Good work, my darling. Good work.”

A string of red dialogue appeared on the display in front of her. “Vessel _Biju Sprinter_ , reverse course and return to ground immediately.”

She severed her communications and changed course. The bracijera had a certain outside range, but like a human body, that didn’t mean it was wise to push it to those limits. She settled more comfortably against the hump, stretched out her fingers so they couldn’t get cramped, and guided the _Sprinter_ forward. She would pace herself and the ship so there would hopefully be reserves when they needed it. Once she was under way, she settled in for the long journey ahead.

#

Faint pieces of music. Or hallucinatory static, fooling her hypoxic brain into thinking there was a pattern to the sounds. 

Bauwerji still had food and water but she refused to partake. She wanted to be sure it lasted, so she only took some when it was absolutely necessary. There was a certain insanity to her method and she knew it would be painfully ironic to die of starvation with a full pouch next to her. She drifted off sometimes. She talked to herself, held conversations with Ediren that made her laugh. At one point she fell asleep (passed out?) and woke up with no idea where she was or what she was doing. There were several times when full hours passed and she was positive she hadn’t moved an inch. She had stopped moving and was just adrift in...

Wait. If she was adrift, that meant she was moving. She couldn’t be frozen in place and adrift at the same time.

The hum of the thrusters was all she could hear. It droned on until she was certain she had gone deaf and was only imagining the sound. She slapped her palms against the side of the ship just to hear a different sound. She opened her mouth wide and stuck out her tongue with no idea why she was doing it. She cried. She laughed. She turned the ship upside down because it didn’t matter, although she felt as if she was dangling from the ship. Then she forgot if she had righted herself or not.

Oh no. Was she upside down or right-side up? Everything around her looked the same. Did it matter if she was facing the wrong way in space? There was no up or down, after all. There was only out. There was so much out. Endless out. But if everything was out, then wouldn’t that make her the center of the universe? Her mind boggled. She could feel the entire galaxy pushing down on her and she cried at the responsibility.

She hallucinated. She imagined Zirem Ele, and Ediren, and everyone she had ever served with. 

One night she woke up, slapped herself hard in the face, and shouted, “But if the hat...!” She had no idea what prompted the assault or what her outburst meant, but she cried and apologized afterward. She cried a lot, she realized, and she stuck the small plastic straw into the corner of her mouth to suck up some water. She closed her eyes and sucked. Water flooded her mouth, cold enough to freeze her tongue and make her teeth hurt. 

There was another tube for food, liquefied but still oddly delicious. It dribbled out onto her lip and then was loose in the cockpit. She cried at the lost sustenance. Her head swam, mostly to get away from the ache that had set up in the center of her skull like the pit of a kelru nut. Her head had been reduced to a small pebble, and the rest of her brain was just vapor orbiting around it. The pain must have come from when her skull was caved in with a spanner.

No... that wasn’t her. Who was that?

More often than not, she woke up screaming. She soiled herself because, in her haste, she’d forgotten to take the appropriate devices for using the toilet. Fortunately she wasn’t taking in enough to void often. She was losing weight, losing sense of herself, losing track of time. She realized she was dead and this was the afterlife, but she didn’t know why her body didn’t know the truth. She stared at the display in front of her and occasionally changed course so the _Sprinter_ wouldn’t crash into anything, and continued her journey to...

...to...

#

A voice was somewhere speaking, speaking Human words that she couldn’t understand. She didn’t know why she would hallucinate a language she didn’t speak, but her brain had done some funny things since launching... since launching... She lifted her head and looked at the display to see if there was a calendar function. The screens were blank. She opened her mouth, but her tongue felt heavy and awkward in her mouth. The straw for her water bumped against her cheek, and she angled her head to sip from it. Dry. 

The garbled voice continued speaking. “I can’t understand you.” Her voice echoed inside her head, and she cringed from the volume of it. “I think something’s broken. I can’t... I d-don’t know what you’re saying. I need help.”

There was silence for a moment, and she closed her eyes to go back to sleep. The voice came again but, once more, she couldn’t understand it.

“Okay,” she murmured. “Okay, okay.”

She continued to drift, but then something changed. She felt heavier, and the ship seemed to close in around her. She gasped heavily as air flooded the ship, suddenly awake now that her lungs were getting much-needed oxygen. Strong hands hauled her up and out of the ship and placed her onto something wide and soft. Her arms and legs splayed out in the wide open, and she smiled at the relief of not being crammed into the _Sprinter_ anymore.

Someone touched her arm. “Can you understand me now?”

“Yes.” She looked up and saw a Human woman, a beautiful human woman, wearing the uniform of an Earth military post. 

“Good. Tell me you didn’t ride that thing all the way from Pelorum.”

Bauwerji nodded. “Mm. Yes.”

The woman looked at the ship in disbelief, then looked back at Bauwerji. “You must have had quite an impressive reason for doing that.”

“Asylum.”

“Pardon?”

“I request asylum.”

The woman said, “Our people are allies. There’s no reason for you to need asylum here.”

“From the Karezza.”

“We’re allies with them, too. You’re fine.”

Bauwerji grabbed the woman’s hand. Some of her faculties were coming back, and she struggled to stay on topic. “Raped me. All of us. Over and over again. I killed him. Ran. They’ll come after me if they know I’m here.”

The woman’s face changed. “We can’t grant asylum, but we can declare you a political refugee. They won’t get their hands on you. I promise.”

Bauwerji dropped down onto the bed and looked at the ceiling. Lights swam past, and she realized the bed was being moved down the hallway. She felt numb to the sensation of moving. 

“I’m Admiral Kathia Reshef. Do you know your name?”

She had to think for a moment. “Bauwerji Crow.”

“Bauwerji?”

The correct pronunciation, rather than the humanization of “Bowery” was so shocking that she thought she’d imagined it. She nodded and then groaned.

“I feel...”

“Yes, I can’t imagine how you feel. Hold tight, Bauwerji. We’re going to take care of you.” She found Bauwerji’s hand, squeezed it. “We’ll take care of you. Welcome to the Quay.”

#

“...Atlantic Ocean in a rowboat. If not a boat made out of leaves.”

The voice was whispered, but it was still enough to rouse Bauwerji from sleep. The woman who’d spoken to her upon arrival - Admiral Reshef, if she remembered correctly - was speaking to a shorter man with white-blonde hair. Reshef was the first Human Bauwerji had ever seen in person, and she was beautiful to behold. Tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair the color of ground with eyes to match. Her skin was not brown, not pink, but some middle mixture that Bauwerji had never seen before. Her hair had been braided before but now it was down, and instead of a uniform she wore a button-down blouse with epaulets on the shoulders.

During her visual appraisal, the Admiral realized Bauwerji was awake and moved to stand next to her bed. She told the man she’d been speaking to “Get Dr. Littlefoot,” and then put her hand on Bauwerji’s and smiled.

“Well, it looks like I made the right choice coming down here. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Bauwerji said. “I must have misjudged the distance.”

Reshef smiled. “I would say that’s so. You were malnourished, dehydrated, hypoxic... hell, basically everything your body needs it was almost out of. Dr. Littlefoot managed to get you back to healthy but it was touch and go there for a bit.”

Bauwerji said, “I wish to request asylum.”

“Yes, you mentioned that before you lost consciousness. You’ve been declared a refugee, and you’re safe. Your people and the Karezza came looking for you. They claimed they just wanted to clear things up but we refused to hand you over. Apparently things aren’t quite as copacetic on Pelorum as we thought.”

“We kept it quiet. No one talked about it.”

“People are talking now. What the Karezza are doing isn’t right. I get the feeling you’ll play a large part in that dialogue.”

Bauwerji wasn’t so sure, but it was good to know the people of the Quay were willing to stand up for her. 

“I did some investigating while you were out. I thought your name sounded familiar so I looked it up. Bauwerji Crow of the Balanquin Air Force. You were quite a celebrity right after the war ended.”

“I did what dozens of other Balanquin did. I just made the mistake of telling someone my name.”

Reshef nodded. “Well, your records are still incredibly impressive. You trained as a soldier, then you fought in the rebellion, and you became a flier to protect your planet. It seems as if when your enemies raised the stakes you stepped up to meet them.”

“It was either that or be crushed under them.”

Reshef smiled and looked down. “As it stands, you’ll most likely be stuck here for a while until things on Pelorum settle down. The Karezza seemed very intent on seeing you punished for what happened.”

“I’m not surprised. I hope my presence here won’t be burdensome.”

“Well,” Reshef said, “you would have to pull your weight.” Bauwerji frowned. “It’s an Earth saying. You’ll have to make yourself beneficial to the general community of the station. You have to have a purpose.”

Bauwerji nodded. “I haven’t received formal training, but I built my ship from tip to tail with my own hands. If you need an engineer...”

Reshef said, “Actually, I was thinking of another position. I’ve been without an executive officer for almost two years now. I have a second-in-command, but there’s some appeal to having someone outside the military chain of command that I have to answer to. It would technically be a civilian position, but considering everything you’ve been through, you would outrank everyone on the station. Except for possibly myself.”

Bauwerji smiled warily. “Why?”

“You’ve been at war long enough, Bauwerji. It’s time for you to know a little peace.” She tilted her head to the side. “Not that the station is quiet. But it should allow you a comfortable place to catch your breath between crises.”

“I would be honored,” Bauwerji said.

“Excellent. We’ll go over the particulars once you’re back on your feet.” She checked the panel above Bauwerji’s head, then looked over her shoulder. “And I shall go see what is keeping the doctor. Excuse me.”

She was almost to the door when Bauwerji said her name. “What of my ship? The _Biju Sprinter_. Did it survive the trip?”

Reshef smiled. “Barely. Just barely. That’s a tough little ship you have there, Bauwerji.”

“Yes, it certainly is. Thank you, Admiral.”

Reshef nodded and disappeared into the corridor. Bauwerji let her head sink into the pillow and closed her eyes. Before she fell asleep she took a deep breath, held it, and slowly exhaled just to prove she could. “Thank you, ji’o,” she said to the ship. “Thank you for getting me to my destination.” She smiled and fell asleep before Reshef returned with the doctor.


End file.
